A. L. Buehrer What I Write and Why

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Learning From Novels: Leah Good’s Counted Worthy

For
the first of hopefully several novel discussion posts, I’ve chosen a novel I
got for Christmas last year. Leah Good is a young, self-published, Christian
novelist. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. I was convinced to put
Counted Worthy on my Christmas list because there was some excitement over the
book on The Rebelution.

First, before I go on, let me say that I am
almost literally impossible to please when it comes to novels. (And I use
‘literally’ in the literal sense.) Modern novels have even less of a chance. I
don’t like the typically scanty atmosphere they are barely able to muster.
Nonetheless, I decided to try to stay positive, and read Counted Worthy.

There are a lot of different little things I
could say about this book, but I’ve narrowed it down to a major good point, and
a major bad point. Bad news first:

In a word, worldbuilding. The term
“worldbuilding” is commonly thrown around in the realms of speculative fiction
writers, but really, it applies across the board. You must build your world.
Counted Worthy is a futuristic dystopian novel. One of the essentials of the
dystopian genre is to give a very strong sense of cultural decay by vivid,
imaginative worldbuilding.

Good slacked a little bit here, in my
opinion. No, she did try a bit. You have the typical banned-book list and
incinerator combo, the neglected city slums, the hyperactive corrupt police
force…but she stopped there.

Frankly, what she needed was either more
imagination or more ability to express it. We have here, the framework of a
dystopian culture—the bare essentials. We need some specific details.

For example, she metions briefly that the
clothes people where in the inner city are extravagant. But she never describes
a single outfit that would typify these fashions. So, the reader is left
wondering if it’s really okay if they’re imagining Hunger Games style mock 17th
century garb.

Likewise, you hear next to nothing about architecture,
technology, or transportation. Okay, so we know people have these things called
‘pocket screens’ which are essentially no different than today’s iPhones. For
whatever reason, we just call them pocket screens now. (Think about this: do
names for technology usually become more bland and literal, or more trendy and
brand-based as time goes on? Television is called TV now.) Also, she does avoid
the problem of creating futuristic means of transportation by saying that cars
are too expensive for non-government people to drive, therefore they stick to
old-fashioned bicycles.

In my opinion, this makes some of the action
scenes a little bit humorous to imagine visually, but for some reason I’ve
never been able to take cyclists seriously.

On the other hand, the main thing I observed
about the book was a good thing. There are a ton of Christian writers at work
today, but barely a handful actually write Christian fiction.

In saying this, I’m not judging Christian
authors as writing immoral or un-Christian novels, what I’m saying is what
they’re really doing is pumping out a lot of ‘clean’ romances. If you took the
occasional prayer, or church service, or scripture-quoting out of the
manuscript, not much would change. Not so with Counted Worthy.

The subject matter of Good’s novel is what
makes it good. It’s not just a mediocre story with some good things in it and,
most importantly, some bad things not in it. The essence of the story is
Christian. What’s more, it’s a very non-rosy, non-happily-ever-after story
about gritting your teeth and hanging on when things look hopeless. For that
reason, I hope it starts a trend.

But keep in mind, if you intend to write a
dystopian novel, you will need to invest in your setting. Hone your
worldbuilding skills. Have fun with it. Your readers will thank you.